I Was There by Teresa Cos

I Was There

Teresa Cos

Index

9. Venice Film Festival, Lido of Venice 10. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 11. Venice Architecture Biennal, France Pavillion 12. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 13. Venice Film Festival, Hotel Excelsior, Lido of Venice 15. Milan Fashion Week, Dolce & Gabbana Show, Metropol Cinema 16. Venice Architecture Biennal, Japan Pavillion 17. Venice Film Festival, Hotel Excelsior, Lido of Venice 18. Venice Architecture Biennal, Beyond Entropy Exhibition, Cini Foundation 19. Venice Architecture Biennal, Italy Pavillion 21. Milan Fashion Week, Dolce & Gabbana Show, Metropol Cinema 22. Venice Architecture Biennal, Biennal Gardens 23. Venice Film Festival, Hotel Excelsior, Lido of Venice 24. Milan Fashion Week, Palazzo Giureconsulti 25. Venice Architecture Biennal, Russian Party, Palazzo Pisani Moretta 26. Venice Architecture Biennal, Italy Pavillion 27. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 29. Venice Architecture Biennal, Russian Party, Palazzo Pisani Moretta 30. Venice Film Festival, Hotel Excelsior, Lido of Venice 31. Venice Architecture Biennal, Russian Party, Palazzo Pisani Moretta 32. Venice Architecture Biennal, Russian Party, Palazzo Pisani Moretta 33. Venice Architecture Biennal, Russian Party, Palazzo Pisani Moretta 34. Circuito Off Short Film Festival, White Trash Party, Lido of Venice 35. Milan Fashion Week, Luca Rebecchi Show, Palazzo Clerici 37. Venice Architecture Biennal, Italian Party, Palazzo Contarini 38. London Fashion Week, Sommerset House 39. Milan Fashion Week, Massimo Rebecchi Show, Palazzo Clerici 40. Milan Fashion Week, Antonio Marras Show, Triennale 41. Milan Fashion Week, Dolce & Gabbana Show, Metropol Cinema

43. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London

77. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris

44. Milan Fashion Week, Dolce & Gabbana Show, Metropol Cinema

78. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris

45. Milan Fashion Week, Dolce & Gabbana Show, Metropol Cinema

79. FIAC, Court Carrée du Louvre, Paris

46. Milan Fashion Week, Antonio Marras Show, Triennale

80. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London

47. Milan Fashion Week, Antonio Marras Show, Triennale

81. Venice Architecture Biennal, Biennal Gardens

49. London Fashion Week, Sommerset House

83. Venice Architecture Biennal, Biennal Pavillion

51. Venice Architecture Biennal, Italian Party, Palazzo Contarini

84. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris

50. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris

85. Milan Fashion Week, Massimo Rebecchi Show, Palazzo Clerici

51. Milan Fashion Week, Roccobarocco Show, Loggia dei Mercanti

86. FIAC, Court Carrée du Louvre, Paris

52. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London

87. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris

53. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris

89. Venice Film Festival, Hotel Excelsior, Lido of Venice

55. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 56. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 57. FIAC, Court Carrée du Louvre, Paris 58. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris 59. Venice Architecture Biennal, Japan Pavillion 61. Venice Film Festival, The Red Carpet, Lido of Venice 62. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 63. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 64. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris 65. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris 66. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris 69. Milan Fashion Week, Antonio Marras Show, Triennale 70. FIAC, Court Carrée du Louvre, Paris 71. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 72. Venice Architecture Biennal, Corderie dell’Arsenale 73. Frieze Art Fair, Regents Park, London 74. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris 75. FIAC, Grand Palais, Paris

I Was There

Teresa Cos

Qui fit, Maecenas, ut nemo, quam sibi sortem seu ratio dederit seu fors obiecerit, illa contentus vivat, laudet diversa sequentes?1

As a matter of fact, this is what I chose as the title of this photo book. I Was There is the result of something in-between a survey and a jouney around art, film, and fashion events. It is a quest for signs which metaphorically represent the artificial and temporary nature of such occasions, and an observation of people’s interaction and behaviour. In-

There are places and situations in which the performance of life reaches its highest level, becoming a deliberate theatrical act. Situations in which being seen to be there, and playing a certain role, is the key reason that justifies one’s presence.

ternational events have deliberately been chosen - Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice Film Festival, Milan and London Fashion Weeks, Frieze Art Fair and Paris FIAC (Foire Internationale d’Art Contemporaine) - to show the globalised face of the culture industry and the resemblance of its audience. However, even though attended events took place in just four European cities, the people in the photographs come from all over the world.

Public relations rule our society, whether we like it or not. Being part of a network is required nowadays, whatever the game one wants to partake in. Despite the rise of internet based systems of social connection, personal interaction remains the most effective way of gaining someone’s trust; five minutes of conversation with the right person can change one’s life or career. This is even truer in the arts and culture world, where it is often so hard to get in touch with someone at the highest level, that it becomes easier to try and look for opportunities ( perhaps even stealthily infiltrating when not invited! ) where one might “accidentally” bump into the desired encounter. I am talking about galleries, museums, private views, showcase events such as art fairs and exclusive parties. However, once one manages to access this magical world, the truly exhausting P.R. is still yet to begin. Before getting to speak with that right person, all the performative rituals that are necessary to grasp his or her attention, need to be initiated and extended to the moment - which may also never come - in which one introduces himself. When this happens, the next and most important phase of the performance is triggered; the part where one tries to “sell” himself can now start. Sometimes participating in an event is not even about the purpose of meeting someone, but just about the pleasure of being in the same room with the ‘cool’ crowd, in order to be able to tell people the next day : “I was there”.

Using Erving Goffman’s studies about performances and Zygmund Bauman’s theory on liquid times as intellectual backgrounds, I tried to depict a world that, in my opinion, highly reflects some of the most evident characteristics of our society, such as anxiety in the struggle for success, together with the desperate need for recognition and approval, which make people live with the constant fear of being considered losers. We want to impress, we want to please, we want to show that we can be whoever we want to be, or better, whoever it is convenient to be within a certain group of individuals. Sometimes this is an unconscious process, sometimes it is deliberate, “performers may be sincere, or be insincere but sincerely convinced of their own sincerity”2, but definitely it comes to a point in which there are no boundaries between our true selves and the selves we want to be. “This mask is our truer self, the self we would like to be”3, comments Goffman. A mask can refer to anything: clothes, accessories, a particular attitude, facial and speech patterns. In accomplishing the shooting of I Was There, attention was paid

1 See Orazio Flacco, “Satira I”, in Le Satire, tradotte con coscienza e serietà da Mosca, Rizzoli, Milano, 1945. ( Horatius,“Satire I”, in Satires - Can you tell me, Maecenas, why each one, unhappy with his condition, either earned by work or donated by fate, envies one of the others? )

2 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Anchor Books, New York, 1959, p. 77. 3 ibid., p. 30. 93

to all the expressive equipment intentionally or unwittingly employed by the individuals during their performances, particularly to what Goffmanrefers to as setting and personal front. The setting involves furniture, décor, physical layout, and other background items which supply the scenery and stage... If the term setting refers to the scenic parts of ex-

the other; his gestures and even his voice seem to be mechanisms;...He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a café. ...The waiter in the café plays with his condition in order to realise it...5

pressive equipment, the term personal front refers to the items that we most intimately identify with the performer himself and that we naturally expect will follow the performer wherever he goes. As a part of personal front we may include: insignia of office or rank; clothing; sex; age and racial characteristics; size and looks; posture; speech patterns; facial expressions; bodily gestures; and the like.4

I Was There is based on the concept of self-recognition. Aware of the risk of sounding naive and pretentious, the book is directed to the same typology of people depicted in its photographs; because whilst a good percentage of them are conscious that the dynamics that lie in fashion and art events are merely to be considered rules of a game one needs to play, some others take this too seriously, becoming victims of an overimposed system. Moreover, I never considered myself different from the subjects of my photographs; I was there too, I have been there before, and I am sure I will be there in the future.

The curious observation of these qualities, together with the sense of frustration that I have always felt whilst myself being a performer at similar events, was one of the main points of interest that first brought me to this project. This concept was initially realised in a small series of images called Party Anima(l), shot during summer 2009, at Venice Art Biennale private views and Venice Film Festival after parties. I started, not fully conscious of what I was doing, to take close-ups of gesticulating hands, shaking hands, holding-glasses-of-champagne hands, holdingcigarette-and-mobile-phone hands, as well as tattoos, clothes’ textures, purses, backstage bangles. These are details that represented to me wider signs of a constant pressure to pretend to be at ease in every circumstance. I deliberately chose to avoid faces in the belief that there was already so much information in those details and in those gestures that I did not need facial expressions to speak about that carefully controlled behaviour that so much recalls Sartre’s waiter:

I Was There looks at a certain aspect of our society using irony as an antidote to disappointment, but also as a weapon to instil the viewer with the awareness that we are all together in this facade. Still, the hope is to provoke a concerned smile, rather than a laugh. Garry Winogrand is the photographer who in my opinion was able to best express this kind of subtle feeling. In his book Public Relations, he draws images of the late ‘60s fanciest parties, thrown in New York City’s culture Meccas, such as the MOMA and the Guggenheim Museum, in the presence of the most famous artist of all time, such as Andy Warhol and Frank Stella, alongside images of the protests that at the same time were crowding the streets below. His ironic attitude is not intimidated by the subjects depicted in the photographs; regardless, Winogrand takes the mickey both of the arty New York scene as well as the young

All his behaviour seems to us a game. He applies himself to chaining his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating

5 As in Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Anchor Books, New York, 1959, p. 81

4 ibid., p. 34. 94

activist - broken glasses and blood on his face. The editing and the structure of the book, that were carried out at that time by the curator Tod Papageorge, are what leave us astonished at the end, with a smile yes, but also with the feeling that something has just been provoked in our minds.

and finally give you the picture you wanted. This is basically the loss of what Goffman defines the maintenance of expressive control, the moment that can reveal what lies behind the mask of the performers. A performer may accidentally convey incapacity, impropriety, or disrespect by momentarily losing muscular control of himself. He may trip, stumble, fall; he may belch, yawn, make a slip of the tongue, scratch himself, or be flatulent; he may accidentally impinge upon the body of another participant. Secondly the performer may act in such a way as to give the impression that he is too much or too little concerned with the interaction. He may stutter, forget his lines, appear nervous, or guilty, or self-conscious; he may give way to inappropriate outbursts of laughter, anger,...he may show too much serious involvement and interest, or too little.6

The use of the flash light has been a clear choice since the beginning. As I was taking pictures mainly at fashion events or in situations in which the attention given to style is an integral part of the mise-en-scène, I thought that I wanted to play with features belonging to fashion photography. For this reason I looked at the work of German photographer Juergen Teller, who has made the use of flash light one of his most distinctive style marks, in particular the use of shadows on clear surfaces, so cold and dry that creates that sense of unease that I wanted my pictures to be infilled with. But at the same time I also wanted to use the flash for its most brutal, and at the same time playful characteristic, of creating images that almost look as if they were staged, and in which people are frozen in time as manikins. Observation, interaction with subjects and speed have been the most important issues to achieve this intention. The flash indeed can be a challenge: you don’t often get to shoot the same picture twice, because if people are not aware of your presence the first time, after such a bolt of light, they will be, and inevitably get self-conscious, making the second shot pointless. At the same time, at events such as fashion weeks, the opposite problem can occur. A lot of the people there are in fact dying to be photographed, to find themselves in the style page of a fashion blog. So they pose for you, which is not necessarily a good thing. But as they don’t bother about the flash, because it makes them feel like stars, you can at least keep on shooting pretending you are being accommodating, till the moment comes, sooner or later, in which tired of smiling or looking at you, they will drop the veil,

In other words, we must be aware that the impression of reality fostered by the performances that we deliver in public, is a delicate and fragile thing that can be shattered by very minor mishaps. The expressive coherence that is required in performances points out a crucial discrepancy between our “all-too-human selves and our socialized selves”7. When someone is caught in one of those revealing moments, the flash light together with a smart framing to insert the human figure in an unusual or double sensed position - transforms a simple gesture into an evocation of something that goes beyond the image. The viewer is left with a sense of curiosity mixed with doubt, and this is exactly what gives value to the picture. The process of editing the pictures has been very hard. When dealing with a project like this, that always involves the presence of people, you are somehow obliged to shoot a lot of photographs. When you go

6 Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Anchor Books, New York, 1959, p. 60. 7 ibid., p. 63. 95

home and start looking through them, you realise immediately that the things you couldn’t see at the very moment of the shooting, now become the reason why you choose a picture instead of another. It is really challenging to try and keep a complex scenario, such as a group of people, together in a single frame, because there is no way of having

in people’s eyes, that remind of Sartre’s “attentive pupil who wishes to be attentive, his eyes riveted on the teacher, his ears open wide, so exhausts himself in playing the attentive role that ends up by no longer hearing anything.8 Similarly we can be so caught inside our characters, that we surround ourselves with lines that don’t belong to us. I Was

total control over the situation. Part of the framing is always conscious: you see someone interesting, you follow him, you focus on him. But it’s the unpredictable that makes a picture worth choosing, or that thing that whilst being still perceivable, stands outside the picture; for instance, a cut arm of someone outside the frame can be the key element of the entire composition.

There, yes, but where exactly? The world of events is so crowded with everything, that ends up being empty. When one looks at the emptiness of current art, the only question is how much such a machine can continue to function in the absence of any new energy, in an atmosphere of critical disillusionment and commercial frenzy, and with all the players totally indifferent? If it can continue, how long will this illusionism last? A hundred years, two hundred? This society is like a vessel whose edges move ever wider apart, and in which the water never comes to the boil.9

The book alternates rhythmically between single and double page spreads, with the single usually occurring on the right. The only pictures that stand alone on the left introduce the two core moments of the book. The first is a digression on events attended in Italy. This is probably the most intimately constructed part of the book, as during the editing I realised that I had unconsciously shot some pictures that spoke to me about the decadence of my home country. The second digression is dedicated to art fairs, with a particular attention not only to the behaviour of the audience at these events, but also to its interactions with and reactions to art works. When constructing the pairs and the sequence itself, I had to deal with complex choices, in order to achieve the specific mood I was looking for. The photographs of details that represent the artificiality of the events I attended (for instance a picture of electricity cables running along the stairs of a XVIII century Milan palace) helped me to create that feeling of untouchable tension which to me represents the theme of the entire book. People’s glances are the other main thread, because they speak alone of the core theme of the book, the above described anxiety and need for recognition. This is perceivable simply by the tension

I guess that if one substitutes ‘current art’ with ‘current society’ the equation doesn’tnreally change, does it? And who are these ‘indifferent players’, if not us? Even if, contrary to Bauman I believe that there is energy to be found in new generations, we definitely reached a break point and we are in desperate need for new perspectives.

8 As in Erving Goffman, The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Anchor Books, New York, 1959, p. 42. 9 Jean Baudrillard, Fragments, Verso, London, 2007, p.25. 96

I Was There ÂŠ 2010 Teresa Cos